Tag Archives: journal

88 – Days Gone By (From Santa Fe to Tulsa)

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11/16

Ohh, it has been so long since the last time I journaled. A week spent in Santa Fe; and nothing. Then three days of little but eat, sleep, drive, over, and over, and over. To be fair, nothing of note occurred while in Santa Fe. My sole achievement being an eleven mile run to the top of Atalaya and back. Also, slacklined with a friend, Jacob, and made curtains (yet to be used) with Matt for my Outback. Began drawing. Ended drawing. I felt very much at home. Knowing Matt and Jacob would make it very easy to move there, but I don’t think it will happen.

Oh!, I nearly forgot about the contra dance I attended at St. John’s. Jacob organized it and persuaded me to attend despite my misgivings. I’m an embarrassment when it comes to any sort of organized dancing. The contra proved no different (though I did have some experience from years past square dancing with my ex). Gratefully, many others were inexperienced as well, and some less coordinated than I. Once the steps are learnt it’s not so bad, but the learning experience is fraught with confusion, near-calamities, and befuddled faces. I’m much too self conscious for my own good. Fun was had I think by all, however! And, ahh!, the beautiful redhead who I danced with at junctures! An expert, no doubt! Slender and willowy as a grass blade, with the skin and fine, well-sculpted features of a marble bust. Impeccable! And with a confidence to match!

 
Leaving Santa Fe I drove straight on to Amarillo where I stopped for an espresso at Evocation, then onward to Palo Duro Canyon where I camped.

I passed through the gates and took a short, winding drive around the rim before charging down the steep decent to the canyon floor where the campsites are. During all of this the sun had only just dissolved into the horizon (it was a red disc slowly sinking into distant desert sands when I arrived at the entrance to the park), and all around me the landscape was pitched into the blue-black of twilight.

Having pitched my tent on a clean, grassy spot along the edge of some vegetation—low trees and chaparral—I proceeded to cook my dinner to the quiet orchestrations of insects.

Through all the night was the velvet hooting of owls, and the howl and shriek of coyotes. The moon bright as a billiard ball—a spotlight glancing off its surface. An enormous eye so far away that despite its great speed in circling the earth appears to be floating overhead, fixed in place.

Woke up in the morning to a blinding, impenetrable sun creeping over the canyon rim, two deer nibbling their way across the campground, birds fluttering from shrub to shrub to tree—Redstart, Black-Crested Titmouse, Warblers—a roadrunner meandering in its start-and-stop way, the air alive with bird song and taut, blazing sunlight. Everything shimmering and weightless, carried on wings.

After taking an age to make a cup of coffee and get packed up, I drove up and out of the canyon, back towards Amarillo and the interstate, stopping on a few occasions to take photos of the western panhandle’s flat earth, vanishing point perspective roads, and a tumbledown house surrounded by an oasis of dead trees. The western portion of the panhandle is flat and lifeless (Palo Duro Canyon being a tremendous exception); fascinating in its own right, like, say, the way the lunar landscape is fascinating. The panhandle’s eastern half abounds with small canyons and rolling hills—vastly different, and far more interesting. One might even say, awe inspiring. This continues into Oklahoma, minus the canyons and awe inspiring, though the landscape does continue its trajectory of increasingly green lushness (I will have to wait until Arkansas until the term “lush” truly becomes apt though).

Stopped in Clinton to visit a couple who have recently moved their coffee business from the interior of an Airstream trailer to an actual brick and mortar shop front that they renovated themselves.

From Clinton to Tulsa where I stayed with another wonderful WarmShowers host who I’ve stayed in touch with via Facebook.

87 – El Malpais

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During the drive from Flagstaff to Santa Fe I stopped at El Malpais National Monument for a couple hours to explore La Ventana Arch.

Easy to get to, La Ventana is located along highway 117, about a beautiful, 20 minute drive south off Interstate 40. There is much more to see within the 114,000 acre monument and 263,000 acre conservation area, but as I had limited time, not wanting to arrive at my friend’s house in Santa Fe too late, I decided to just stick to the area around the arch where I could explore in as much detail as I liked.

La Ventana is the largest accessible natural arch in New Mexico, though I suppose it pales in comparison to many of those found in Utah. Nonetheless, it is still a stunning geologic formation in an awe-inspiring landscape.

El Malpais
La Ventana Arch
A wall like a man
Reclined, embalmed, entombed
Eternal
Like a mummy
Like a Buddha lying down
Replete in wisdom
Watching the world
Having watched the world
Forever
Having never lived and so never to die
Sees the life of Oasisamericans,
The invasion of the Spanish,
The death of the natives,
The force of belief in Manifest Destiny
What atrocities has this lord not seen?
What beauty has this lord not witnessed?
Judging not
Silently observing

85 – Writing from the Comfort of “Home”

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I stayed on an extra day in Flagstaff; I could have stayed there permanently. Because of the extra day I had to drive straight through to Santa Fe which I had not originally planned. Oh well; I spent a bit more time at the hostel with Marc, and I bought a used boxset of Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. MINT! The books didn’t even appeared to have been opened. The box was a bit beat up, but that’s a non-issue, and it only cost me $8. I’m happy to have a set with matching covers now—because these are such important things—and beautiful ones at that.

Despite driving from Flagstaff direct to Santa Fe I was still able to make a couple stops along the way—one being Walnut Canyon, just barely outside Flagstaff, and El Malpais National Monument, the other, an hour or so west of Albuquerque—as well as detouring a bit along Route 66, mainly curious if I would find anything of photographic interest. Regarding Walnut Canyon I am particularly interested in one photo that I took—not necessarily anything spectacular though—that is simply enough a peninsula of sorts jutting into the canyon with an asphalt walking path winding along it leading to and from the visitors center. There is a person barely discernible, submerged in this landscape, dwarfed by it all, his shadow kind of stuck to the rock wall behind him. He’s no more than a few specks, several grains of silver if this were film, just like every other individual detail in the image. No more or less important than any other.

Along Route 66 I made stops in Winslow and Holbrook, Arizona. Dumps in disrepair the both of them, but that’s hardly a surprise what with the rerouting of traffic to Interstate 40 along much of its length many years back. Route 66 is now just a novelty for the curious traveler, such as myself, or no more than just the main street in these small towns that dot it.

I’m writing all of this on my third day in Santa Fe, at Iconik Coffee in Collected Works Bookstore. I feel good here. Comfortable. Content. Satisfied. Relaxed. It’s a familiar place, and feels like home. Matt, with whom I stayed when I first came to Santa Fe on the very last portion of my cycling trip, helped me cut and sew curtains for my car last night. I’m excited about them, and grateful to Matt for the help. I’ve also had the opportunity to meet up and hang out with a good friend from Annapolis. He attends St. John’s College, which is how we met when we were both in Annapolis a year ago. The St. John’s College campus here is located at the start of the trail for access to Atalaya Mountain, but also right at the base of the much smaller Sun Mountain so he was able to take me on a short hike immediately after meeting up, catching the beginnings of the day’s sunset from the peak. The following day he strung up his slackline between two trees and he, myself, and a few friends of his from the college hung out in the cool air attempting to keep our bare feet from succumbing to the numbing effects of the cold ground for as long as possible. Unfortunately, Jacob, my friend, was the only one able to do so for longer than several seconds. I left that evening with my toes frozen up to the metatarsals. There was a great deal of fun had and laughter produced, though, and an always pleasurable sunset observed. I know not how much longer I will be in town, as I’m waiting for delivery of a down quilt from Enlightened Equipment. Hoping they’re able to fix the shipping issue and get it to me soon.

75 -Dreaming as Always

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Just found this in my journal while looking to post some fresher writings. Well, can’t go forward without going back. So…

San Francisco. Hayes Valley. Ritual Coffee Roasters. I feel like I’m in a participatory art project, or, unbeknownst to me have wandered onto a movie set. White chairs scattered around a gravel lot like bird droppings, in no discernible pattern. Pedestrians lounging in the warming sun, some peering at a phone, others gazing into space or watching me taking in my surroundings as I write, or observing passersby themselves, but impossible to tell as most are in sunglasses. Regardless, they all look like extras in a movie waiting for the director’s call, or are extras in a movie, currently rolling, of which I am the star. A pigeon waddles by on orange, matchstick legs like a child’s toy. It should be pulled by a string and rolling on castors. A skateboarder at a grind box interrupts the general state of quiet calm, only briefly, but the clatter sounds of a rockslide. A blow to one’s reveries. A violent shaking awake from an aqueous dream of surrender. I can’t ascertain the use for the enormous blank board that leans over the lot like a spectator, pale and on the edge of his seat during the climax of a play or the last few meters of a too-close-to-call foot race. And the orange metal planters and tables, triangle shaped, the only splashes of color in the space, and so, humming with energy like tiny incubated explosions popping off repeatedly. There is the ever constant breeze which whisks through this dream of mine. I wonder if it will carry me home when I leave.

74 – More Etc. Edited to Mogwai’s Central Belters

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In the Yard, Everywhere a Garden, Frisco
The rustle of the aspen leaves like strings of soft wooden beads gently pushed aside by a hand.
Swallows soaring swirling acrobatics tracing the world’s most complex roller coaster clear into the blue, chittering happily and madly because they are swallows and it is theirs, and theirs alone (but this they do not know: that it is also mine).
A hummingbird’s thrum as it zips there (where?) dashing lines in a picture book, now stopping—hovering stationary—motionless but for the soft blur of wings, in front of a purple flower its slender saber-like bill inserted like a bank card into the slot of an atm. Then, ZIP! from my watchful eye, the flower crystalline still.
And the sun filtering through clouds sweetly and warm, an exquisite hand, fingers wriggling, reaching through soap bubbles for something. The touch of my only lover on my skin.

On the tall green grasses
Water droplets
The mountain peaks
Obscured by rain clouds

A young boy
The pebbly shore
He picks one up
_________

At Lake Dillon Marina. On a large boulder along the shore. The sky perfectly blue. Indescribably blue (indescribably perfect). The sky indescribable at any time. It’s more like an emotion than a physical thing, the sky.
The clouds punctuate long rambling sentences that are meaningless, wholly without sense. They’re beautiful and white. As monumental as the mountains, though they be so much more ethereal, insubstantial, always shifting, changing, bits vanishing like an old flag torn to tatters by the relentless wind. Of course, the mountains do too, just slower. So much slower, like the eternity it takes to find someone you love, and then they’re gone.
It’s been ages since I’ve sat like this, down by the water, just observing. Some time ago in Annapolis. Months ago. The breeze a mere whisper today—a comforting pat on the back by a missed friend. More ripples in the lake than unaccountable footsteps in the world. Infinite and everlasting. The sky contained within, but only a part. One could sit out here forever.

The End (not to be confused with the Birdhouse skate video)
Walking by Royal (in so much as one can walk by a mountain). I’m thinking about how my time here has nearly come to an end, and how this all seems like a dream, how all life seems like a dream, and that I’m nothing more than a wisp of smoke, an amalgam of gas and ashes that has somehow been bound together into a corporeal body, and that it makes no sense, but that trying to make sense of existence is like digging a hole in the desert hoping to strike water. That the beauty and the strangeness and awful magnificence and senselessness are to be loved and cherished and enjoyed (or not, if you so choose!). That it matters not if this is all just a dream and every leaf I touch and mountain I climb are mere tricks of these senses (those senses themselves being tricks, too), that their apparent solidity is nothing but an illusion, and my own solidity as well. I laugh! Because it is the air let out of the balloon, and it flies around the room making that silly noise. It is a revelation. But also the genesis of a dream or a reality (is there truly a difference?) that begins anew every moment of every uncountable moment which is this one singular moment that is and forever will be.

How does one draw a line for eternity, yet never move the pen?

52

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The most brutally difficult day on my bike yet.

I hope this is the last time I write feel the need to write that.

Things started well enough with my front tire nearly bereft of air. I discovered this after breakfast, and after breaking camp, and after having packed everything onto my bike, naturally. Irritated, and rather perplexed I removed everything and proceeded to look for a hole of some kind in the tube. Nothing doing. Now even more perplexed I added air to the tire and finally rolled away from Black Kettle a half hour later.

It was a short three or four miles north that I was to cycle before turning west, and I managed that with aplomb. Having accomplished that task I was immediately walloped by a strong cross-headwind from the south-west, and I wished that my destination lie more immediately north rather than west and south as it did. I was to continue directly west for approximately 45 miles, cycling into Texas, before turning south-west for another 15 in order to reach the next town on the route. That’s 60 miles of basically nothing. That’s actually not entirely true. There was the headwind, of course, and there were many, many, many hills. And there was plenty of grass, and some scattered trees. So, this portion of the day which lasted far, far too long mainly consisted of a series of outbursts of cursing from me from time to time while pedaling along at about eight or nine miles per hour, often about half that for having to go up a hill while being battered by a headwind. It was hot, but I had to conserve water because I was moving so slowly (yet with tremendous effort) so I knew it would take at the very least an hour more than I had anticipated the previous evening to make it to Miami. I also carried little in the way of snacks with me, and I consumed all of those within the first thirty miles.

The few prominent memories I have of this portion of the day’s ride, besides what I’ve already related, are as follows: being passed by a foursome of motorcyclists just before the Texas state line, and then passing them as they pulled off the road to snap pictures of the sign, then being passed again by them ten minutes later and thinking that I chose the wrong mode of travel; stopping beneath one of the few trees not on the other side of the fence, which ran along beside me on both sides of the road for as long as there was a road, to eat all my snacks in one go; a decrepit and caved in old ranch house that I tried and failed to get a good photo of; and, lastly, several miles after turning south-west onto a new highway, dropping down in elevation a few hundred feet, loosing the dry grasslands and rolling hills and finding myself cycling amongst small, stunning plateaus erupted like mushrooms from the sandy ground, and the lushness of trees, and bushes, and the color green to the left and to the right of me, everywhere but on or near the plateaus in the middle-distance.

I arrived in Miami and demolished a surprisingly delicious burger and fries at what appeared to be the only restaurant in town, and consumed more than a liter of water. There being no decent place to stay in town I decided to cycle the next 24 miles to Pampa where I would stay in a much over-priced (as they always are) Best Western. I had one more lengthy climb before the terrain flattened out, the wind lessened and changed direction slightly, and the asphalt improved considerably (I had crossed a county line). Coincidentally enough, all this happened in about a span of ten minutes. After this I scooted along at nearly 20 mph and arrived in Pampa in close to half the time I had expected. It was a glorious end to an absolutely horrid and long day.

Now I am currently eating at the Texas Rose Steakhouse next door to the inn. The name certainly sounds charming enough, though the staff exude none of that. Everyone is just scurrying around like mice or ants, or standing in a corner chewing the cud like a couple of old cows in a field.

The place itself is a squat, wooden building erected over a concrete floor; square, hardwood tables all around, sort of old-timey-like if you might imagine. I can see them all being pushed out of the way from time to time, and great, joyous dances taking place, the community all gathered together, people holding hands, laughing, and the occasional boy and girl, twinkles in their eyes, sneaking off unbeknownst to their parents. There is a band playing on a small stage set up in front of the big stone fireplace over which is mounted a stag’s head. Kegs will be tapped, the beer will flow and many a person may be found stumbling through a dance as the night moves along, and perhaps even found on the floor or passed out in one of the booths that line the walls by night’s end. But here I am munching on a roll, waiting for my food, my imagination brandished like a shield in front of me, and the waitress comes over with my chicken-fried steak (the first and likely only one I will ever have), and all this melts away as I’m seized back into reality and look around me and think about where I am and realize I must have been dreaming because these people want nothing to do with me. They want my money only, and they want to go home.

29

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From Americus to Columbus today. Georgia countryside is gorgeous under a pristine blue sky—succulent, green grass; explosion of wild flowers on tall stalks, along the highway—except for the interminable fields of turned over red clay, some pale, ghostly, almost like sand—spirits of what once was before they were stripped of life, poisoned with pesticides and fertilizers—others dark and rich, never, or only very recently, been planted. But where these fields meet an undulating green ridge of trees, and then the blue wall of sky is something quite lovely to behold, and beautiful in its own right, like the greatest flag unfurled, and being wapped in that flag; I can touch it, feel it all around me. In places it is all that is—just a field of color transmitted across the thinnest, most insubstantial vastness of space, like the synaptic gap between neurons. An existence swallowed up by the pupil, focused by the lens on the back of my eye to the forefront of my mind…

These thoughts occurred hours ago, being penned now at Annie D’s, a tiny, Southern as Southern can be restaurant in Buena Vista. It’s all that’s here in town as far as I’m concerned, and that’s perfectly fine. Never had such a good Half ‘n Half, as they’re known in The South. That sweet tea! Hot damn! Charming place even if the walls and floorboards are filthy, even if the blinds are hung crooked and look as though they might fall off their brackets at the slightest touch. No frills. Stripped down. Plate glass windows on every wall yield so much natural light not a speck of dirt goes unnoticed. Ketchup and hot sauce in hand-labeled plastic bottles in the center of every cheap, masonite table. One in every three of these tables covered in a table cloth. Styrofoam cups. Plastic plates. Smiling faces. Happy people.

 

19 (or 3b)

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One pair of shoes lost, one Nalgene bottle busted, one sense of adventure slightly dented and dismantled: the essential spirit and substance of my ride today. These are my thoughts as the chill air creeps into a poorly erected tent on a sloping ground. And silence. Silence of the mind. Nothing-to-do-ness. The sounds of automobiles intermittent, not regular; a dog barking somewhere, lost in space; crickets, etc.; the mad chatter of frogs. These are the sounds of rural North Carolina. Altogether peaceful and lulling. And yet, I’m wary. I’m not completely comfortable. Perhaps because this is my first night alone in a tent, all over again. Perhaps because I have stated reasons for wanting to do this but then have little interest in doing what I say I want to do, or accomplish. Does that make sense? I should stop this nonsense. The thing will come of itself at the end of the journey, not before. And if it doesn’t? Well, that question must wait. It can only be answered then, at the appointed time, as with all things. Day by day, hour by hour, pedal stroke by pedal stroke.

I chatted briefly with a kid at a gas station, in the community of Seminole. I was standing outside by my rig when he walked over to me and asked about my trip, about which I explained, pointing out that I carry certain things in my trailer, and other certain things in my panniers, which he referred to as “saddle bags.” He then went on to explain that he rides horses, and sometimes he and a buddy would pack their saddle bags and go off on short camping expeditions with provisions of food; and beer, whiskey or both. “Nothing like Brokeback Mountain, though,” he says as he stands there, a cigarette dangling from his fingers by his side, cowboy boots on his feet. He gave me a handshake and wished me well on my trip before driving off with what was presumably his brother and mother. I hopped back on my bike and continued on to find a place to camp for the night. The conversation, handshake, and well wishes were nice gestures, I thought.

In the past I used to poo-poo the encouragement of others (with regard to me), but I always felt my life to be easy, and so the encouragement unnecessary. This life now, so far, isn’t so easy.

18 (or 2b)

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Leaving.

A bagel and an espresso, and them I’m off. ‘Tis a strange sensation when I think about it; it’s been so long since the last time I began this routine, or so it seems. The issue here, of course is the thinking about it. Although, when I think, “It’s just a bike ride,” there settles over me a great calm. And a clarity of mind and purpose. This is just a bike ride. And a beautiful day for it at that. Taut, blue sky overhead speckled with bits of wispy cloud. Crisp, cool, dry weather with a bit more wind than is preferable. Yet here I am in this state of sublime calm and sustained nervousness. Do I contradict myself? I could sit in this cafe forever.

There are things in life which sometimes become missed. But there is always something else to take its place. I go now.